The present invention is in the field of Internet services and business models, pertains more particularly to apparatus, methods, and models for providing a service tracking geographic location of clients of the system, and providing information to the clients based on the tracked location.
The well-known Internet and the subset of the Internet known as the World Wide Web (WWW) is arguably the greatest present net repository and source of information available to persons enabled by suitable equipment to and connect to myriad Internet servers and download information. Enabling equipment for end users includes all computerized machines capable of establishing an Internet connection and of asserting addresses known as Universal Resource Locators (URLs) to connect to individual servers and pages on servers (Web pages), and of communicating in the language of the Internet. Such enabling equipment may be broadly termed Internet appliances, and include in aggregate large Internet-connected servers (which may be enabled to browse and connect to other Internet servers), desk-top personal computers, which typically connect to the Internet through telephone lines and Internet Service providers (ISPs), Web TVs, computerized set-top boxes typically using cable services for connection, and a wide variety of portable computerized units (portable computers).
The latter category of portable computers is of primary interest in the present invention, and includes an increasingly diverse set of equipment taking a variety of names. Among these are laptop computers, palmtop computers, hand-held computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal organizers, cellular telephones, and many more. To fall into the class of Internet appliances it is only required that such portable units be enabled to connect somehow to the Internet backbone, and be able to browse the Internet through some level of executable software, which ability may be enhanced or largely provided by Internet-connected proxy machines.
The Internet and Internet-related enterprise services, as of the time of the present patent application, have been growing at a very great rate, and one important reason for emergence of many new services is the sheer volume and resulting granularity of the Internet. A person accessing the Internet can be reasonably assured that the information he or she might seek is out there somewhere. Finding it, however can be another matter entirely.
A broad variety of services have been developed to help individuals locate information on the Web, among them quite sophisticated browser software executable on the end-user""s Internet appliances, powerful search engines available on proxy servers to browse for subscribers and other clients, and indexing and listing services which attempt to track and cross-reference Internet information sources. For the purposes of the present specification, a client is a person who uses a service, while a subscriber is a client who registers and/or pays for using a service.
Even with enormous effort going into new and better indexing and searching services, partly because of the rate of growth of sources and end users as well, there has been but little improvement in ability to quickly find and easily access information on the Web. Browsing the Internet can still be a daunting task, especially for the relatively uninitiated client. The present inventors have recognized, therefore, a need to narrowly focus information services to provide highly specialized information specific to needs and specialized interests of groups of individual clients, and automatically or semi-automatically provided to such clients.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention a multi-dimensional information repository is provided, comprising plurality of stored data structures; one or more tags associated with individual ones of the plurality of data structures; and a data retrieval system. The repository is characterized in that data structures are tagged according to locations and defined regions relative to the surface of the Earth, and the retrieval system retrieves information from the data structures according to location data accompanying requests for data. In some cases individual ones of the plurality of data structures are tagged according to time in addition to location and defined regions, and both tags are used in retrieving data structures. Individual ones of the plurality of data structures may be tagged according to human interest categories in addition to locations and defined regions and time.
In another aspect of the invention an Internet-connected subscription server system is provided, comprising a data repository having data structures tagged according to locations and defined regions relative to the surface of the Earth; a communication module for receiving data requests accompanied by location data; and a code set for managing retrieval of information from the data repository in response to the data requests. This system, receiving a data request, uses the location data accompanying the request to determine location in individual ones of pre-defined regions, and uses the pre-defined region information to access data structures and retrieve information related to the pre-defined regions for transmission in response to the data requests.
In some embodiments of the system data structures are tagged according to time data in addition to location, data requests include time data, and the system accesses data structures in part according to the time data. In some preferred embodiments the system maintains subscriber information profiles, including subscriber interests, data requests identify individual subscribers, data structures are tagged according to interest categories, and the system accesses data structures in part according to the stored interests of the subscriber initiating a data request.
In yet another embodiment the data repository is a first data repository local to the Internet server, and the system, though the code set, accesses remote Internet-connected information sources, and retrieves information from said remote sources according to one or more of stored client interests and the location data accompanying the client""s request.